


Hermione Remade

by Jenwryn



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Challenge Response, Community: grangersnape100, F/M, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-03
Updated: 2008-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only you can change it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hermione Remade

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the challenge, "Voldemort wins".
> 
> Judges' Choice winner, in the category of "Best HG/SS Angst", at [The New Library Awards](http://community.livejournal.com/tnl_awards/), 2008.
> 
> Nominated for "Best Drabble" and "Best Angst" at [The Quibbler Awards](http://www.quibbler.this-paradise.com/), 2008.

_Only you can change it._

The words are always in her head; a sadistic mantra in the Dark Lord’s voice, only she isn’t supposed to call him, she’s not on his side, she never was, and _he’s_ dead either way so what’s the point?_  
_

_Only you…_

What gets her is that it’s the truth. But she resists.

Until she can’t take it anymore: the whispering voice – the loss clogging her throat through the long sleepless nights – the suspicion that if she’d made different choices…

She’d never understood the attraction to the Dark Arts before.

Because she’d never experienced love, lost.

*

_Only you..._

How long she’s resisted. The knowledge that he would probably never love her anyway. The knowledge that he probably wouldn’t appreciate it either way. She’s seen the memories that he poured into Harry’s mind in his dying minutes. She knows he carried Lily – ungrateful Lily, so far as she can tell – to his grave, quite literally.

But she also knows that time isn’t a straight line. It curves in whirls and bunches, and one small breath changes everything.

One person changing sides. One witch changing allegiance.

One witch loving.

And Severus will live. Isn’t that all that matters?

*

The magic is easy enough to find for one such as her, one who’s as smart as she is, one who’s lost as much as she has.

Light pushes sideways. Colour sways, a rainbow of darkness in her eyes. She moves backwards. She considers unmaking herself, unknitting her very being, but decides against it. She never was that nihilistic.

Instead she slides smoothly through time’s fabric.

She will not be undone, but remade.

She’ll fight for the Dark. Voldemort will win._  
_

_He _will live.

_When the hat touches her head she whispers but one word and the hat cries, "Slytherin!"_


End file.
